Children in Spain are complaining about excessive homework, which is also being supported by their parents, who have decided to go on a strike against their children’s school load for the entire month of November.
The Spanish Alliance of Parents’ Associations (CEAPA) called the strike that covers some 12,000 state schools across the country.
Views of the President of CEAPA:
- President of CEAPA, Jose Luis Pazos told AFP on November 2 that parents had launched the unprecedented initiative as it was quite evident that homework is detrimental to children and is also damaging their extra-curricular development
- Education in Spain was still very dependent on the traditional method of rote-learning i.e. memorising work, said Pazos
- Mentioning the availability of information in current society, he said, “what we have to teach children isn’t to memorise everything, but how to manage information, to be critical, to select what is worth it and what isn’t.”
- “Society has changed deeply, but the environment in the classroom hasn’t,” he added.
Spanish students score low in maths, reading and science: More on the PISA education report
- According to the 2012 PISA education report, on the basis of the 38 countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Spain ranked fifth as the nation with most homework after Russia, Italy, Ireland and Poland out with 6.5 hours a week compared to an average of 4.9
- The workload does not help the Spanish students to perform better and the students score low in maths, reading and science, said the PISA report
- In comparison, countries like Finland and South Korea have spent less than three hours on homework. These countries have the best student performances, said PISA.
- source”cnbc”
